Sam’s Journal of Survival

Touch

012026. This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.

Touch

Today is the anniversary of the breakup.

I ended it a year ago.

I could not do it anymore. I could not do touch anymore. We both cried. He would have stayed, out of obligation and maybe love, but at what cost to him? I had to give him an out. I was the one who ended it. Not him.

I do not think about the conversation itself very often anymore. What I remember most clearly is the moment just before it, the way my body reacted before I had words.

He reached for me without thinking. Not suddenly. Not roughly. Just the kind of touch that used to feel normal. A hand on my arm. A small, familiar gesture.

My body froze.

Not fear exactly. More like everything inside me locked at once, as if stillness might keep something from happening. My breath stalled. My skin went tight. I felt it everywhere, all at once.

He noticed immediately. He always did.

He pulled his hand back, apologizing before I could even explain. His concern was real. His care was real. That was part of what made it so hard.

We sat there in the space that followed, quiet stretching between us. I could feel my body counting time again, waiting for something to settle that never quite does.

He said he would be more careful. That he understood. That we could go slow.

At the time, that sounded kind. Loving, even.

Now I understand why it broke my heart.

Love is not supposed to require constant vigilance. It is not supposed to turn touch into a calculation. How close is too close. How long is too long. Which parts of me are safe today.

I did not want to be something someone had to work around.

I tried to explain what I could. That touch does not land the way it once did. That my body reacts as if it is still somewhere else, even when my mind knows I am safe. That I do not always get a choice.

He listened. He said all the right things. He wanted to stay.

But I could already feel myself bracing for the future. For the apologies. For the careful pauses. For the quiet disappointment neither of us would name.

So I ended it.

Not because I did not care. Not because he failed me. But because my body was living in a different timeline, and I could not ask someone else to live there with me.

I remember thinking I would regret it.

In the months that followed, I learned that regret was not the strongest feeling.

What came instead was relief.

Living alone meant there was no one to flinch away from. No one to reassure. No one to explain myself to. My body did not have to prepare for touch it was not ready to receive.

There was loneliness, yes. There still is.

But there was also quiet. And in that quiet, my body finally began to rest. Sometimes, at least.

I do not know if this is forever. I do not know what healing will look like, or if it will ever include another person.

What I know now, a year later, is this.

I did not end the relationship because I am broken.
I ended it because I feel broken.

I ended it because listening to my body was what I needed. An act of care I had finally given myself. And if I am honest, I ended it because I could not look at the disappointment on his face anymore.

And choosing myself, even then, was survival.